The awards will appear on the GreatNonprofits' 2012 Top-Rated Page beginning on November 15. The Huffington Post, TakePart and Parade Magazine will be referring their readers to check out Top-Rated Nonprofits in November.

Friday night, stylists from Y-Chrome Men's Salon came to our downtown Hospitality Center to offer haircuts to our guests. About twenty of our guys got their hair cut, they loved it! They acted like they were renewed, some with dramatic new looks.

Saturday at our fall concert with Portland Chamber Music, we awarded our chaplain Roger Fuchs the first Gary Vaughan Hospitality Medal. The award recognizes an extraordinary individual who "embodies the spirit of Nightwatch."

The award is named for Nightwatch's first executive director who during ONW's first 22 years of existence, indelibly defined the our essence as a ministry of hospitality.

As our chaplain, Roger has been here weekly for the past five years faithfully offering a Sunday worship service and a Tuesday Bible study for the our guests, as well as engineering the annual Memorial Service and helping to plan and lead our annual spiritual retreat. (All this has been without receiving any compensation.)

In accepting his award, Roger shared it with his wife Jean, who has assisted him on almost all those Sunday evenings over the past five years.

We received a small grant this week from Chase Bank, and also a call from the Oregon Community Foundation inviting us to submit documentation for a grant. The latter is significant because the OCF does not accept unsolicited applications. An organization must be invited to apply. The word has apparently gotten out--after 30 years!--that we're doing good things here.